Charlie Fiske, a long-time Bridgewater resident, will spend 26 months in the African country of Malawi as a public health advisor in an HIV/AIDS program. Malawi has a life expectancy of 52 years old and 11 percent of the country has HIV/AIDS
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Charlie Fiske, a long-time Bridgewater resident, will spend 26 months in the African country of Malawi as a public health advisor in an HIV/AIDS program. Malawi has a life expectancy of 52 years old and 11 percent of the country has HIV/AIDS according to the CIA Factbook. Fiske, who now lives in Arlington, is a 66-year-old lobbyist with two children, ages 31 and 30. The average age of a Peace Corps volunteer is 28 with seven percent of volunteers older than 50.

Enterprise news photographer, Emily Reynolds shows children and parents of Chapatali Village in the Dedza District of Malawi the pictures she has just taken of them.

By Charlie FiskeFor The Enterprise

March 24, 2014
12:01 a.m.

More than a year ago an Enterprise news photographer from the Boston area asked about Malawi and wanted to hear more than the usual answers about it being the ninth poorest countries in the world with too many cases of HIV.

When it was suggested that the best way to experience Malawi is to visit and spend some time here, Emily Reynolds seemed more curious about making the 8,000-mile trip.

Perhaps the journalist in her needed to explore a place she'd never visited and to discover for herself the real Malawi experience. It is a story that only her camera could reveal.

Her emails showed her inching closer to a final decision and my days here with the Peace Corps are ending soon. It was easy to see how the experience could affect her but she needed to discover that for herself. I knew that if she came to Malawi it would forever change her as a journalist. She would discover her own view and experience of Malawi.

With a single backpack, two cameras and lap top, she listened to that inner voice that whispered, "You'll never know unless you go."

Emily carved out seven days in mid March where she could be away from her job and head towards Africa, a trip she would make at her own expense.

My temptation was to show her “my Malawi” but like many news reporters she was determined to look, experience and feel what she wanted to see and find. It’s that sense of curiosity that distinguishes the best of reporters. She is no exception.

After she arrived it was the scenery and people between the airport and the capital city that seemed most startling. She commented that at every place along the way there was something different to see. The landscape has breath taking stretches of open land clear to the horizon and mountains that spring up to shape the view.

When you have been here for any length of time the strange become ordinary. Just her expression reminded me how different the Malawi world is from life in the states. After a while Malawi becomes all too familiar with people with and without shoes walking everywhere. The general rundown appearances of stores with their odd shapes, signs, colors and overall appearance are similar throughout the country.

The world here includes the balancing of large baskets of vegetables on women’s heads and bike transporters everywhere with their huge stacks of wood defying the laws of gravity. Emily was seeing what now goes unnoticed by many of us.

For six days she would visit youth groups at a central hospital, a remote secondary school near the lake, some villages in Dedza, a district hospital, the local church, the market and a series of VSL (village savings & loan) activities in the Manjawira area of Ntcheu. She would even be rescued by a group of local villages who know how to move a car hopelessly stuck in six inches of mud on a deserted back road.

Each of these countless experiences along with the hundreds of individuals we met while walking the streets and lanes of Ntcheu had familiar and similar characteristics. If there was any question about the reality of the Malawi motto as the “warm heart of Africa”, she never once raised any doubt.

At one point she expressed amazement at the royal reception she got with every new group. During a VSL gathering she leaned over and whispered, “We are just ordinary people, why the big welcome?” Given the many people and groups she met it would have been impossible to orchestrate a better and more receptive greeting everywhere. That warmth is forever a part of this culture and country. Emily had discovered Malawi.

In spite of the many the problems Malawi faces and its endless list “items needing to be fixed” its people show a gracious hospitality that is sorely missing in so many countries. In addition to more than a thousand photos she took, I suspect she will carry this experience as a legacy lasting a life time. Emily will want to share her story of Malawi as she lived it firsthand. We await her insight.

One comment she wrote on a short thank-you note discovered the day after she left assured me she had she’d found her own view of Malawi.

"Thank you so much for sharing your Malawi world with me. It was an amazing experience" - Emily.